I think this could be the best all-round smartphone of the year. 5" Full HD display, blazing fast Snapdragon S4 Pro, LTE, glass front and back, waterproof (!), 13MP cam with actual HDR video and photo's, really high-quality materials, quite thin, small footprint for it's screen size, SD card slot (unlike most recent phones), ... I doubt any other smartphone can reach this level of 'completeness' (especially on the waterproofing part) in the near future.

What Sony did with Android is also quite nice in my opinion. The Album and Walkman app are both vastly superior to what is included with AOSP and to anything available on the market in my opinion (I have them on my current phone too). It has Miracast and NFC support and pretty much everything Sony is bringing to the market these days can be paired with these phones using NFC.

It's definitely on my radar as my next phone (I usually upgrade in Q1), but I have to wonder what Motorola, HTC and Samsung will be bringing to the table. There's a possibility that a few months after the Xperia Z hits the market that HTC/Samsung will release Tegra 4/Snapdragon 800 phones which could have an equally good feature set.

That said I still want to get my hands on the Xperia Z for a review. But for purchasing I might want to see what HTC and Samsung have up their sleeves for their 2013 releases

I doubt we'll see any Snapdragon 800's before H2 (Xperia Z hits the markets end of Feb over here). The samples haven't even gone out to manufacturers yet. The Tegra 4 is probably too power-hungry to put in a phone and if Samsung puts an Exynos 5 with four A15 cores in the S4 it'll be seriously crippled by extreme throttling/heating/power drain when under continous load. The S4 Pro is probably the fastest chip with reasonable power requirements out there right now.

What I just really like about the Xperia Z is how thin it is and how nice the materials look. It literally has glass on every side (all the borders are some glass fibre polymer stuff too)! And well, it's waterproof. Sony has a lot more experience with waterproofing phones than any other brand, so I doubt Samsung or HTC will be doing that for a flagship.

I'd be tempted to hold out and see what the S4 has to offer or the new HTC phones but seeing how delayed things are in the U.S (the s2 took forever to get over to AT&T!) I'll likely be eligible for an upgrade right around the time this comes out.

I'd be tempted to hold out and see what the S4 has to offer or the new HTC phones but seeing how delayed things are in the U.S (the s2 took forever to get over to AT&T!) I'll likely be eligible for an upgrade right around the time this comes out.

In the US you'll have to settle for the TL though, and only on AT&T and maybe T-Mobile. Probably not even available through the carriers but only unlocked. Sony is putting the US market on lower priority and is instead focusing on strengthening it's position on the European and Japanese markets (which aren't as screwed up by carriers). You can actually buy a phone unlocked in any European country and be 100% sure it'll work on all other European networks.

In the US you'll have to settle for the TL though, and only on AT&T and maybe T-Mobile. Probably not even available through the carriers but only unlocked. Sony is putting the US market on lower priority and is instead focusing on strengthening it's position on the European and Japanese markets (which aren't as screwed up by carriers). You can actually buy a phone unlocked in any European country and be 100% sure it'll work on all other European networks.

Just looked up the TL. Smaller resolution on front camera, not 1080p (which may be overkill anyways on a phone), dual core(are apps taking advantage of quad core yet?) and a smaller screen.

Blegh. I will say, Europe gets the best phones. And yeah, our carriers are pretty lame. It may be cheaper to buy an unlocked Xperia Z, get mobile data only and simply use Google voice. If an unlocked Xperia Z would work here. Anyways, very sexy phone.

Just looked up the TL. Smaller resolution on front camera, not 1080p (which may be overkill anyways on a phone), dual core(are apps taking advantage of quad core yet?) and a smaller screen.

Blegh. I will say, Europe gets the best phones. And yeah, our carriers are pretty lame. It may be cheaper to buy an unlocked Xperia Z, get mobile data only and simply use Google voice. If an unlocked Xperia Z would work here. Anyways, very sexy phone.

Unlocked Z would work on AT&T (not T-Mo) but without LTE.

The TL and T are exactly the same, I don't know where you got the specs for the TL. Only difference is front camera, body and network support! So you lose the waterproofing but you gain a more compact handset and an IR transmitter (so you can use it as universal remote, includes an app that supports all TV brands). They both have the same quadcore SoC

Besides the LCD resolution, I failed to see which part of this phone is better than Nexus 4.

And frankly why do we need 5 inches screen? Why do we need 1080P in a 5 incher?

What's wrong with the Xperia S? I still have one, does fine!

I personally think this phone is better in terms of network (LTE), body (waterproof + thinner), camera (13MP + HDR, 10 full-size shots per sec endless burst) and memory, with always 16GB on board and a microSD slot. And probably display. And oh, it has an FM radio (which I still like from time to time). Then there are personal preferences: I think Sony's media apps are brilliant and the design of this phone is amazing).Plenty of reasons not to go for a Nexus 4. The availability is another thing, over here in Belgium the Nexus 4 has to be purchased through grey import and is ridiculously expensive.

You don't need a 5" 1080p display, but this phone is hardly any bigger than a Nexus 4. At 5mm taller and 2mm wider you can hardly complain about the size of this phone compared to the Nexus 4. Sony managed to deliver a bigger screen without making the phone any bigger. And while 300-ish PPI is nice, it's the 400+ barrier that really pushes edges to perfect sharpness. In small shapes and fonts the 320 PPI of the Nexus 4 (and all other smartphones around that PPI) is just not completely enough to make it 100% perfectly sharp and smooth.

I personally think this phone is better in terms of network (LTE), body (waterproof + thinner), camera (13MP + HDR, 10 full-size shots per sec endless burst) and memory, with always 16GB on board and a microSD slot. And probably display. And oh, it has an FM radio (which I still like from time to time). Then there are personal preferences: I think Sony's media apps are brilliant and the design of this phone is amazing).Plenty of reasons not to go for a Nexus 4. The availability is another thing, over here in Belgium the Nexus 4 has to be purchased through grey import and is ridiculously expensive.

You don't need a 5" 1080p display, but this phone is hardly any bigger than a Nexus 4. At 5mm taller and 2mm wider you can hardly complain about the size of this phone compared to the Nexus 4. Sony managed to deliver a bigger screen without making the phone any bigger. And while 300-ish PPI is nice, it's the 400+ barrier that really pushes edges to perfect sharpness. In small shapes and fonts the 320 PPI of the Nexus 4 (and all other smartphones around that PPI) is just not completely enough to make it 100% perfectly sharp and smooth.

I would like to see one single manufacturer has the backbone to improve two things: battery and color reproduction accuracy.

Xperia S is fine, for the first few months I got it. Then it went downhill from there. From the reason you mentioned, I think mSDHC slot is the only valid reason of buying a XZ.

If you like Sony that much, as a matter of fact yes you do since I remember you from XDA forums, along with K900, good for you that you preordered it.

For me? No more Sony.

Well I can understand the Xperia S isn't perfect. Build quality wasn't as good as your average iPhone and the battery could be a bit weird at times, but I personally never had issues with it. I've been using mine for over 10 months now and still like it a lot.

On colour accuracy, I think that we're pretty much there. HTC and Apple are both very good, with very low Delta E (where Samsung does extremely bad with their AMOLED's). HTC and Sony do very, very well on colour temperature, reaching almost exactly 6500K. On brightness Sony is the undisputable winner, and on contrast the Nexus 4 does best, followed by Apple, HTC and Sony. Source: http://tweakers.net/...eer-scherm.html (in Dutch but should be easy enough to understand)

Battery is something I agree on, but I also think it's fine the way it is. I'm absolutely not doing anything to make sure my battery lasts longer (all syncs and connections pretty much always on and relatively heavy use) and my battery still lasts me all day, every day.

Oh. I was comparing the wrong phone I think >_>. Well then! Can't wait for the ZL to hit AT&T

Will you post a review of the Z when you get it?

Yes! It's scheduled for delivery 28 Feb (the day after my birthday) but it might be sooner. Can expect a review here and on The Verge forums a few days after that!

Looks good, but not 'pure' Android, like some of the Nexus devices. You'd have to root and ROM to get the most out of this phone. It's too early in the year to tell if this will be 'the' superphone, after all it's only January. There are events like MWC, and Google IO, so I'll wait till other manufacturers announce phones. I have an upgrade eligible in October, but I wouldn't be able to keep my unlimited data plan with Verizon if I did that. I'd have to buy the phone outright anyways, so I'll probably wait till later in the year.